English friends and family - a whirlwind tour of southern England

Back to our base in the UK and we spent a fantastic day in and around Bookham.  Geoff headed off to explore the local cycling routes and ended up cycling up Box Hill which is where the Olympic Road Cycling time trial event takes place.  Lucy spent the day harvesting fruit, veg and flowers from Jenny's allotment.  It is so nice to have dinner almost entirely of produce that you picked!

Raspberries, tae berries, snap peas, beans, potatoes, black currents, more black currents, strawberries, courgettes, rhubarb and sweet peas!

Box hill getting ready for the Olympics.

We spent a night down with Maggie and Jeremy Robinson on their farm in Devon (we were there in the end of May) to catch up with them and to see Maggie for her birthday.  It was great to see their son Thomas and his fiancé Natalie again too. On the way down to Devon we stopped at Stonehenge.  Both of us were sceptical of the hype around a pile of stones, but we thought we'd better check it out ourselves.  We found it really interesting and the size of the stones is just massive!  The audio guides available provided interesting commentary on the history and building of the henges and we'd recommend that you take one walk around with one too while you're there.

The familiar stone circle.

Audio-guiding on a typically wet and chilly summers day...

The stones were just MASSIVE, some weighing ~ 45 tonns!  How they got the blocks on the top we're still not so sure....

Then it was off to Bristol to see Jessica Robinson and explore the city a bit (see blog on Bristol and Brunel).  Bristol is also home to Banksy (a very elusive graffiti artist, whose identity remains a trade secret). He is famous for his distinctive black and white street art which now appears all over the world - but is particularly evident in Bristol.  We were lucky enough to find at least two of his pictures while we were in town.

One of Banksy's murals. Another "artist" took a paint-gun to it...

There were public table tennis tables set up all over Bristol.  It was such a novelty for us that we had to have a game even though it was raining!

The distinctive Radcliff Camera

Oxford was our next stop where we stayed with Louise Robinson (yip - the whole family!) and enjoyed exploring the town.  One of the highlights for us was the tour of the ancient Bodlian Library and Evensong at Christ Church College. We met up with Guy and MJ Axelson for a lovely dinner and to meet their chickens :)

The gargoyles were brilliant!

The stairs up to St Mary's church tower were well worth it - the view was stunning.

The bridge of Sighs

The school of Divinity beneath the Bodlean Library. It was also shot as the set for the infirmary at Hogwarts School as part of the Harry Potter series. Look familiar?

Dinner with Guy and MJ.

The weekend saw us meeting up with Bernard and Linda Spies (mountaineering friends of ours from South Africa) in Leicester before heading out to the Peak District to go climbing. Our wonderful Peak District climbing trip is documented in our next blog "Climbing The Roaches".

On our way home we walked the brilliant maze at Clivendon Estate (a National Trust property) before having tea with Andrew Mitchell (Lucy's cousin) in Maidenhead and dinner with Karina Haines (one of Lucy's good sailing friends) in Northwood.

The maze was a-maz-ing!

We enjoyed the bird sculptures in the gardens.

Our last two and a bit days were spent in and around Bookham, mostly sorting though our things and packing up.  We did however get out to see the chocolate boxy, quaint town of Shere, explore the impressive Clandon Manor House and Hatchlands Manor House - both National Trust houses.  Clandon is an architectural masterpiece featuring a double volume marble entrance hall with life size friezes of people emblazoned onto the ceiling. Its collection of 18th century furniture had been bequeathed separately to the national trust and included beautiful furniture with inlaid designs, the detail of which we had never seen before, and a bizarre collection of china figurines and birds - impressive but we're not sure we're going to start our own collection any time soon.  Clandon was the family house of the prominent Onslow family, 3 of whom were speakers in parliament, and we enjoyed 'spotting' two de Laszlo portraits (see blog in April on "London - Friends, culture and tubes).  There is also an authentic Maori meeting house in the garden complete with wooden carvings and mother-of-pearl inlays.

Shere all decked out in British bunting.

The entrance hall at Clandon

Hatchlands is completely different and the National Trust inherited an empty house.  This they've rented out to the Cobbe Family as their residence and houses their personal display of artwork and Mr Cobbe's piano collection.  Visitors are allowed access to the ground floor only during certain hours each day to see the items.  In amongst portraits of famous people and by famous people is an original painting of William Shakespeare (the one of him in a dark jacket with lace collar and a goatee) and of his only known patron the Earl of Southhampton (this portrait was thought to be Lady Norton, the Earl's grandmother, but a few years ago it was discovered that it was actually of the Earl himself!).  There was also a number of paintings by Titian and some sketches by Rembrand van Rijn.  As for the piano's - they were amazing.  We lost count, but think there were about 42 in the house and their owners ranged from Marie Antoinette, Chopin, Liszt, Schubert and Edward Elgar, (who had inscribed the works he had composed at that instrument on the instrument!) to name but a few. Geoff couldn't believe the wealth of history and heritage sitting in such a private collection. We couldn't play any of the piano's, but they do allow tours with the owner a handful of times during the year when he performs on them.

One of Chopin's piano's.

Elgar's piano with the titles of the works he composed on it written inside on the wood.

Hatchlands House.

We were very glad to be able to wrap the European part of our trip off with dinner and chocolate birthday cake for Uncle Charles's birthday. 

Cake for Uncle Charles' birthday

A very big thank you to everyone who hosted us along the way  - you allowed made this dream trip possibles for us by your generosity and kindness. We have really enjoyed getting to know members of our families and friends in their home settings.

Jenny and Charles and their dog Danny